Lancaster University Management School, School of Computing and Communications
Research Associate in Natural Language Processing of Corporate Financial Communication

Applications are invited for a research associate position in natural language processing as part of an interdisciplinary team working on Corporate Financial Communications within the Department of Accounting and Finance and the School of Computing and Communications (SCC) at Lancaster University: A Research Associate in Natural Language Processing of Corporate Financial Communications (Reference: A489). The focus of the post is on the development of natural language analysis techniques and associated tools to undertake the automatic analysis of textual data in the field of corporate financial communications. You will join an ambitious research team with a longstanding record of work on natural language processing to undertake groundbreaking work in text mining for Accounting and Finance. The position is for 24 months. Salary is British Pound 25,251 to 29,249.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS: You should have a first degree or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Text Mining, or a related field; and a PhD in the area of corpus-based analysis, natural language processing or a closely related subject. You should also possess suitable software development skills and demonstrate the ability to work as part of a team as well as the capability to integrate diverse multi-disciplinary requirements into the design of the natural language processing tools to be developed.

JOB DESCRIPTION: The person appointed will work on a major ESRC project entitled: "Understanding the Influences of Financial Reporting, Corporate Disclosures and Financial Media on the Corporate Financial Information Environment" awarded jointly with the University of Manchester and the London School of Economics and Political Science and part sponsored by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). The purpose of the work is to understand how companies communicate information to stock market investors, and the role of the financial media in this process.

The work will involve collecting and managing company and financial media data for training and testing the computer-based text analysis. The post-holder will use existing software, as well as developing new tools where appropriate for contextual and structural analyses of firms' disclosures and financial media articles. They will also be responsible for day-to-day research duties relating to all of the main objectives of the project. Among other duties, this will involve collecting, managing and archiving all project data; helping to organise two project conferences, and maintaining the project's website which will include open access to the project's metrics and tools. It is expected that the RA will co-author joint research papers with other members of the team.

FURTHER INFORMATION: Candidates are encouraged to make informal enquires to the project investigators Dr Paul Rayson (p.rayson@lancaster.ac.uk) in SCC or Prof Steven Young (s.young@lancaster.ac.uk) in Accounting and Finance.